When 68-year-old Richard England walked into the Jackson County Public Library in Seymour in November 2020, stopped at the circulation desk and dropped off a poem he had written, he likely had no idea it would turn into a federal case.

Entitled “The Red Mean,” England’s poem’s three verses read as follows: “Know no good, bring out your dead, let them eat cake, off with your head. Before you become Donald Trump’s clone, know Satan’s reward, is only a loan. Liars are losers, haters are cruel, oh what a pity, to die such a fool.”

We’ll leave it to others to critique this poem, but we note it does rhyme, at least. England’s poem has gotten much more attention and notice than it otherwise ever would have, thanks to the overreaction of library officials, which will cost county taxpayers in the form of legal fees if not reputation.

Library staff who found the poem and read it said they were “shocked, scared and confused” by it. This seems an odd reaction to the written word by people for whom the written word is their stock and trade. Nevertheless, the library administrator said “that when she spoke to staff, (their) voices were shaking. They were really upset.”

“This fear was enhanced by the political climate surrounding the 2020 election and anxiety surrounding the pandemic,” the library said.

So library staff went to the video and discovered it was England who had dropped off the poem.

When England got home, he had a phone message. It was from Seymour police. They called to tell him he had been banned from the library for the rest of his life and that if he returned, he would be arrested for criminal trespassing. England said after he was banned, he was forced to drive some 20 miles to the Bartholomew County Public Library in Columbus if he wished to check out materials or use library services.

England sued, claiming his civil rights under the First and 14th amendments had been violated. As The Republic’s Andy East reported, Chief Judge Tanya Walton Pratt of the U.S. Court for the Southern District of Indiana recently entered judgment in England’s favor. Without even hearing evidence, Pratt ruled that based on the facts, there was no question England’s rights to free speech and due process had been violated.

The judge ordered the library to lift its ban against England. Because England was the prevailing party in a federal civil rights suit, the Jackson County Public Library (that means taxpayers, either directly or through insurers) will be cutting a check to the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana, who represented England, to pay his legal fees and court costs, not to mention the cost defending this silly case to begin with.

We call this a silly case because the library never should have overreacted to such an egregious degree over a poem. The judge noted that in the poem, “there was no identifiable individual or specific group … targeted for violence and JCPL does not credibly argue that it does.” Further, there was no evidence that England had been disruptive, a key element the library uses in its policy to ban patrons.

Whatever issues the Jackson County Public Library may have had with England, it could have saved a lot of unnecessary expense and embarrassment by admitting it was wrong and settling this case long ago.

But that’s just poetic justice, we guess.